


Fragment of Memory

by Ernmark (M_Moonshade)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Amnesia AU, Gaslighting, Horror, M/M, Memory Loss, but surprisingly not a lot of blood or anything like that, creepy hallways, dark spaces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-01-19 07:03:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12405429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Moonshade/pseuds/Ernmark
Summary: “By the time you see this, you won’t remember what happened, and that’s a good thing. I’m wiping your memories for a reason, and you need to respect that. I know how you feel about puzzles, but this is one that needs to stay in the box. There are some things you’re better off knowing, okay? Just… trust me.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU roughly inspired by the game Amnesia: The Dark Descent and its offshoots. 
> 
> You don't need to be familiar with the game to enjoy the story-- in fact, it might be better if you're not.

When he wakes up, it’s with the mother of all hangovers. His head is pounding. His limbs are throbbing. His insides are burning. His vision is all kinds of messed up– on one side it’s fuzzy and blurred, and on the other it’s too sharp, too clean, overlaid with too many colors, and it makes him feel sick. He rubs at it, as if the problem is just some technicolored eye gunk from the night before– but when he touches it, his eyelid presses against something hard.

Cold panic rushes through his veins. That thing in his head– it isn’t his eye. 

“Shit,” he hisses, but it comes out more like a croak. His mouth feels like it’s coated in acid and oil, and the taste comes rushing back when he moves his tongue. He wants to throw up, but he gets the feeling that’ll be even worse.

He doesn’t know for sure. He doesn’t know anything for sure. He doesn’t even know the bed he woke up in, or the room. It’s big, he knows that much. Luxurious. A hell of a lot bigger than–

Than what? 

He doesn’t know. God, he doesn’t know.

A flash of blue light catches his attention, and he whirls to face it.

There’s a comms on the bedside table, its light blinking with a notification. He grabs it and turns it on. He’ll call for help. Figure out where he is, what happened to him. He needs to know for sure. 

The screen lights up, along with the source of the notification:  _Video recorded. Playback now?_

He doesn’t have any better ideas.

_Yes._

The video fills the comms screen. For a moment it’s blurry as the camera struggles to find focus in a shaking hand. The walls are riveted steel panels, the light cold and fluorescent, and then the camera turns to face the person holding it. 

He looks like hell. His head hangs low between his shoulders. His dark skin is sallow, the circles under his eyes look more like bruises, his hair is unkempt, his stubble is almost long enough to call a beard. The right eye is bionic, staring at the camera over a long scar that crosses his nose. 

A touch confirms it: the same scar is on his own face. 

That shouldn’t need confirmation. It should be obvious. But it isn’t. The person in the video looks vaguely familiar, but no more than that. 

The person in the video heaves a sigh. 

“Juno Steel,” he says. “If you don’t know, that’s your name. If you do… I don’t know, maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work. But your name is Juno Steel. I’m you. Just… trust me on this, okay? I can’t…” He takes a moment to collect himself. “By the time you see this, you won’t remember what happened, and that’s a good thing. I’m wiping your memories for a reason, and you need to respect that. I know how you feel about puzzles, but this is one that needs to stay in the box. There are some things you’re better off knowing, okay? Just… trust me.” 

The man in the video looks down. One hand is still holding his comms, but the other is clutching a vial of blue liquid. He turns it over in his hand, staring at it like it’s a charged blaster.

“Listen,” he says. “I know you’re not exactly the happy-go-lucky type, but maybe this’ll give you a chance to…” He breaks off. Sighs. “Just… try to do better this time around.” He pops off the cap with his thumb and tilts the vial to the camera. “Bottoms up.” And he downs it in a single gulp. His face contorts into a grimace, and then a look of pain. 

“Ugh,” he mutters as his face goes out of frame, leaving behind nothing but the riveted steel walls. “Shit.  _Shit_ , this is gonna…”

The screen freezes, then dims.

_End of video._

Juno stares at the comms, willing himself to believe it’s a fake. A lie. A trick. Video can be doctored, can’t it? Besides, he remembers yesterday–

No, he doesn’t.

Or the day before. Or where he lives, or if he lives there alone, or how long he’s been there. He must have had a childhood once, but it’s gone. His mind is a blank.

Juno stares at his reflection in the screen with horror.

_What did I do?_

* * *

Juno has turned the room upside down before he realizes what he’s doing. Once he slows down enough to think, he finds words to attach to the actions: 

_Investigating. Looking for clues._

Whatever that blue stuff did to him, it was rough. The bed sheets look like they’re fresh, but they’re soaked with sweat. The clothes in the closet are his size, but they’ve been recently laundered, their pockets empty of anything important. 

Funny. The person who recorded that video looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Someone like that would barely bother washing their clothes, let alone hanging them up like that. 

The bedroom walls are papered with intricate silver designs overlaid on a dark, dusty red; the furniture looks like it’s made of real wood. It’s a nice place. Expensive. And more important, it isn’t the steel-paneled room where he took the drink. He’s not wearing the jacket from the video and his feet are bare, but there’s no signs of socks or jacket anywhere in sight. His shoes are set neatly by the door of the room. 

Somebody’s been taking care of him, washing his clothes and apparently putting him to bed. Judging by the bottle of scotch hidden in the mattress, he’d been staying here before he did this to himself.

Not long, though: aside from the bottle and the clothes, there aren’t any real personal effects. Sure, there’s practical things: a wide-brimmed hat, a holster and cleaning kit for a conspicuously missing blaster, a sewing kit, a first aid kit– a whole lot of kits, come to think of it, already packed into convenient little cases and ready to be moved at a moment’s notice. Even accounting for an overzealous maid, it doesn’t feel like he’s had any chance to really settle in. 

He tries to look through his comms, but if there’s anything important there, he isn’t finding it. Maybe it’s the migraine and the wiped memories, but the interface is overwhelmingly complicated. He manages to blunder through the basic functions, but they don’t give him anything useful. The gallery is empty of pictures, aside from the video, and the list of contacts is just as bare.

A new comms, maybe? A burner?

There’s a bathroom attached to the room, and it’s marginally more helpful. Aside from the basic toiletries and a bottle of cologne, he finds over-the-counter medications in the medicine cabinet– caffeine pills, sobriety enzymes, migraine-strength acetaminophen, all of them economy sized and all of them close to empty. It confirms what the bottle of scotch suggested: whoever he used to be, he had a drinking problem. 

He shuts the medicine cabinet and is faced with his own reflection.

The face in the mirror is his own. He’s sure about that now. He’s getting used to the cybernetic eye, the scars, the nose that’s been broken more than twice. Those were all in the video. What isn’t there is his other self’s haunted, empty stare.

 _I know how you feel about puzzles,_ his past self said.  _But this is one that needs to stay in the box._

There’s only one other door from the room, and it’s heavy and huge, set into the wall on antique hinges that squeal when he pushes it open. Beyond lies an enormous hallway. The floor is polished marble the color of dry blood, and it’s cold as the Martian wind under his bare feet. The walls are paneled in wood so dark that shadows seem to pool in the edges of the molding. The hall is wide enough to drive a car through, and the ceiling is just as high. 

Juno can’t help but feel small and exposed in a space so huge. 

He tries to peer down to the end of the hallway, but the moment his back is turned to one direction, the hairs on the back of his neck start to prickle. He’s acutely aware of the vast hallway sprawling behind him, gaping and empty–

No. Not empty.

He whirls to face the other way, squinting into the dark. Somebody was there. He could have sworn somebody was out there. He could feel eyes watching him. 

“Hello?” he says. 

The only reply is the distorted echo of his own voice.

But somebody was  _there_. 

He has half a mind to go back into the room, where he can sit in the corner and see everything without feeling like something might be creeping up behind him, but he can’t stay here. He has to know what’s going on.

And so he steels himself, picks a direction, and starts walking.

Somebody needs to put up some curtains or lay down some carpet or something, because the acoustics of this hallway are a nightmare. The wood-paneled walls catch the slightest sounds and throw them back to him from odd directions. The slap of his bare feet on the marble seems to come from somewhere up ahead. The sound of his rustling clothes seems to come from just behind him, so close that he twists to look over his shoulders, just in case. The hall behind him is empty. Always empty. 

Worst of all is his breathing: what should be a simple inhale-exhale is twisted and warped and reverberated until it sounds like something else altogether. It’s like a babble of conversation, barely heard from another room, faint and light and insubstantial. There’s no shape to it, no pattern, no sense. Nothing but nonsense and chaos and random–

“ _Juno_.” It’s no more than a sigh, barely audible in this echo chamber. 

He goes still. 

“Who’s there?” he demands, louder and clearer than before. “There’s no point in hiding; I can hear you.”

The echoes of his voice bounce off the marble floor for a few seconds, and then all is silent. 

The chill of the floor leeches through the soles of his feet and into his ankles, sharp and stiff and almost painful. The same unbearable cold wraps around his arm.

He spins, his fist flying to catch whatever the hell it was that grabbed him. The sudden cold releases him, but his punch lands on empty air. 

But he could have sworn–

A throat is cleared. 

“Mister Steel,” says an unfamiliar voice. 

When Juno turns around again, there’s a woman standing a few feet away, well out of arm’s reach. Smart lady. She’s wearing a sharp suit, sensible shoes, and an expression like she expects him to start howling at the moons but she’s too professional to say so out loud. “I see you’re awake.”

“Where the hell did you come from?” Juno demands, because she startled him. That’s the only reason why his heart is trying to ram a hole through his chest. 

The woman’s face remains unwaveringly professional, and she gives a sweeping gesture with one arm. “Mister O’Flaherty would like to see you.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Juno follows the woman in the suit– after all, it’s not like he’s got a whole lot of options right now– but not without a fight. She insists that he go back to his room and change into something halfway decent. He refuses to cooperate until he gets answers. The woman lets out a carefully controlled breath through her nose– on someone less posh, it might be a snort of exasperation– and she gives in. 

There’s not much chance for conversation after that. She leads him through a maze of halls and doorways with the kind of speed that only confidence and practical footwear can provide– and if Juno’s right, she’s pushed to move even faster by spite. He’s having trouble keeping up; the floor hasn’t gotten any warmer, and every step feels like a hammer against the soles of his freezing feet. 

All at once, the woman stops in front of a door. It’s large and imposing, but other than that it looks exactly like all the other ones they’ve passed. 

“Wait here,” she says. This door, at least, has had its hinges oiled sometime in the last couple centuries. It barely groans as she pulls it open with one smooth motion and steps inside. “Mister Mayor.” 

“What is it, Evelyn?” The voice on the other side is muffled by the door, but it doesn’t sound like it was particularly loud in the first place. It’s a man’s voice, rough and reedy with age, and he sounds distracted. There’s a rustling of papers.

“It’s Mister Steel,” the woman says. “He’s awake.”

The rustling stops abruptly.

“Shall I send him in?” she asks.

“I take it he’s on his feet, then,” he says evenly. 

“Yes, Mister Mayor.” Mister O’Flaherty, she called him before.

“Go ahead. And after that, take these orders to City Hall. I want the legislation to go into effect immediately.”

“Yes, Mister Mayor.”

The door opens wide, and the woman– Evelyn– gestures for Juno to come in. There’s a thick file folder in her hand. “Right this way, Mister Steel.” The moment he does, she vanishes down the hall.

Juno watches her go for half a moment before he turns his attention to the enormous mahogany desk and the man sitting behind it. 

He’s old, with a froth of white hair curling around a heavy forehead. Deep lines look like they’re permanently etched into his face, marking out the better part of a century’s worth of careful consideration. He focuses that consideration on Juno now.

The intensity of that gaze leaves him uncomfortable, so he does the only thing he can think of: he talks.

“You got rid of her fast. Any reason why this conversation’s got to be so private?”

“I’m a busy man, Juno. I don’t have time to let my employees stand around collecting gossip. But you knew that.” His eyes narrow. “Or you did.” 

And just like that, Juno goes from uncomfortable to unnerved. Instinctively, he lies. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No, you don’t,” the mayor says, and there’s a note of regret in his voice. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“I know you’re Mayor O’Flaherty,” Juno says with a confidence he doesn’t recognize, but the mayor isn’t impressed by his bluff. 

“You used to call me Ramses.” He takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Tell me, what do you remember?”

A part of Juno insists that he double down, that if he can just string together enough educated guesses, he’ll be able to convince this man that he knows exactly what’s going on. But there’s no point in bluffing when the other guy’s holding all the cards. Besides, he’d rather have his questions answered.

“I remember that importing this much wood and marble must have cost a fortune.”

“Charming, isn’t it?” Ramses asks, his voice dripping with disgust. “And because the mayoral mansion is technically a government building, it was paid for with public funds– earmarked for the city’s poorest citizens, of course.” He pauses. “I don’t suppose any of  _that_ rings any bells.”  

There’s a rhythm to the speech, the syllables worn into familiar patterns by repetition. Juno suspects he could probably recite the whole thing verbatim, if he’d ever heard it before.

But he hasn’t. Not that he’s aware of, anyway.

“Do you remember anything else? Your family? Your career? How you lost that eye?”

Juno frowns, groping through the murk inside his head for anything to do with anything, but he comes up empty. “I’ve got nothing.”

Ramses sighs.“But I suppose this is more than I can ask for. You should be grateful, Juno. It’s a small miracle you’re alive, let alone up and speaking. Most of the people who overdose to your degree aren’t so lucky.”

Finally: answers. “You know what happened to me?” 

Ramses replaces the glasses over his eyes. “By the time my security team found you, you were already unconscious. I would say you were drugged, but there was no signs of a struggle, and this was in your hands.” Ramses reaches into his desk and pulls out an empty vial. Juno recognizes it instantly. There’s still a opalescent blue film clinging to the inside of the glass. “By the look of it, you did this to yourself.”

Does he not know about the video, then?

That’s probably for the best. 

Juno reaches for the vial. “What is it?”

“Lotos V,” Ramses’ voice is clipped, as if he’s biting back a few strong opinions about the substance. “It’s a controlled substance on Mars, but that never stopped anyone with the right connections, and you’ve certainly got those. Or you did, I suppose.” 

That only poses more questions, but Juno shoves them aside for the moment. “But what is it?”

“It’s sometimes given to trauma victims to inhibit the formation of memories– always in small doses, of course. Yours was not a small dose.” 

“But that means there’s a way to reverse it, right? There’s got to be… I don’t know, an antidote or something.”

“Don’t get so excited, Juno,” Ramses says. “I’ll have my people look into it, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll find anything– and even if they do, it will take time if they’re going to avoid attracting attention. I took this office with the promise to clean up this city. It won’t end well if reporters find out my personal bodyguard was elbows deep in the drug trade.”

Juno frowns. That doesn’t sound like him. “Was I?” 

“Would you be able to deny it if they said you were?” Ramses counters. “Until this is sorted out, I’m going to need you to stay inside the mansion. Don’t talk to anyone about your condition except myself. Is that understood?”

“And if I run into a janitor or something? Or your personal assistants? A place this big needs people working here, doesn’t it?”

“Fewer than you would think,” Ramses says darkly. “My predecessors were mobsters and criminals, and they surrounded themselves with much of the same. When I arrived, I fired the members of the staff who were on the take– which was nearly all of them. You helped track them down,” he adds, almost an afterthought. “I believe the remaining staff made a point of avoiding you after that.”

Juno doesn’t remember that, either.

* * *

Evelyn is still off running whatever errand Ramses gave her, which leaves Juno to find his own way back to his room.

It shouldn’t be that hard– after all, the trip between the room he woke up in and Ramses’ office is one of the only things he does remember– and he’s guessing that in literally any other house, it wouldn’t be, but the mayoral mansion isn’t exactly designed to be easy to navigate. The too-huge hallways are long and twisting, with too many sharp turns and abrupt stairwells. There are no windows anywhere– probably because the last few hundred residents of this building didn’t want people to just look inside and know who kept company with the mayor. Those same residents probably had a vested interest in making it hard to get around if you didn’t already know the floorplan inside and out. He can’t even look ahead: the lights are motion-activated. The next set of lights only flickers on when he’s gone a few steps into the darkness. 

Juno manages to find his way mostly by backtracking, but it’s hard to keep the numbers in his head. The hangover hasn’t exactly left him, and on the way here he was too busy with trying to keep up to pay much attention. He knows to go left at the Venusian vase, then three doors down until he gets to the stairs. Down the steps, then right, then past… two doors, or was it three? 

He opens the third; it’s a closet, not another hallway. Past three doors, then. 

Down the hallway, up two flights of steps, left at the tapestry. Check every door in this hallway to find the one that leads into yet another stairwell. Down and then left, past four doors and then right, pass two halls and then another right, another right, another right. 

His head is throbbing, and the goddamn situation with the lights isn’t helping at all. As soon as he’s used to the light, he’s plunged back into darkness. The moment he starts getting accustomed to darkness, he’s blinded by another flare of light. It’d be agonizing with two natural eyes or two bionic ones, but he’s got one of each, and they keep adjusting to the change at different rates.

“ _Juno_ …”

And all the while, he has to deal with the goddamn echoes. 

Because that’s all they are. Just echoes. They’re not footsteps coming up behind him. There’s not heavy breathing right at his neck. There’s no voice whispering his name. 

“ _Juno_ …”

He breaks into a jog, ignoring the pain in his feet. The faster he can get back to his room, the faster he can take a shower and a shit and something for his head, and then he’ll feel better. That’s all he needs.

“ _Juno_.” 

If the voice is louder, it’s because he’s breathing heavier. That’s all. It’s just an echo. Just an echo.

“ **Juno.** ” 

The jog turns into a flat-out run and he plunges into the dark. The sensors aren’t fast enough to keep up with him. Ahead is only pitch black, with lights flaring up behind him like they’re giving chase. He pushes himself faster, faster–

And then crashes headfirst into a wall.

He slides to the floor, his vision flashing red and white as the cybernetic and natural eyes try to cope with sudden trauma. Blood seeps into his mouth from a split lip. The lights above him still haven’t come on; the only illumination comes from far down the hall, reflected on the shiny marble floor until it seems to be reaching for him. 

There’s someone standing in the light. 

Juno can’t see a face. It’s just a silhouette, stretched out by the reflected light until it doesn’t look human. Its movements are all wrong, twitching and shuddering like a mechanical puppet gone on the fritz. 

“Juno,” it whispers, staggering forward. The voice feels like it’s coming from right beside him. Each footfall is magnified by the paneled walls until it’s as loud as cracking bone. 

Juno doesn’t breathe. His nose is thick with the scent of his own blood. 

The shape comes closer, stepping out of ring of illumination, and Juno waits for the next set of lights to come on. It won’t be as freaky when he can see it up close, he tells himself, and he’ll put a fist through that shadowy face.

But the next set of lights doesn’t come on. 

The footsteps keep moving closer, each one almost as loud as the heartbeat in Juno’s ears. 

His fingers itch for a blaster, but all he has is his comms. He wants to turn it on, to see the thing up close–but if he does, it’ll see him.

His lungs burn for a breath, but he slides his hand over his mouth and nose. He can’t breathe. He can’t move. As long as he’s in the dark, he’s safe. As long as it can’t see him.

“ _Juno…_ ”

The light of the distant hall is blotted out as the shape steps directly in front of him– too big, too close, too fast– Jesus, it’s right on top of him, but all he can see is the ink-black of void. 

He still can’t see it, but he can feel the sudden icy cold as it reaches for him.

He throws up his arm to ward it off, his fist still clenched around his comms. One of his fingers must have found the power button, because the screen flashes to life, lighting up the hall in front of him.

It’s empty. 

There’s nothing there. 

The sudden movement must have triggered the motion sensors, because the hall light flickers to life a moment later. 

The shape is gone.

Juno is alone. 


	3. Chapter 3

That night, Juno dreams about hallways. 

Not marble and wood, but red stone worn smooth by ten thousand years, lit up on all sides by glowing hieroglyphics that seem to whisper and move as he walks past them. Between steps, the scene shifts, and he’s walking past riveted steel and the pale circle of a flashlight on poured concrete floors. The smell of burnt flesh and wet earth shifts into the oily stench of diesel fumes and then back again. 

There’s someone beside him, but he can’t see their face. 

He’s looking for something, but he doesn’t know what. 

And just past the edge of his vision, something is watching him.

* * *

“Well,” Ramses says at their next meeting. “You’re looking better.”

“Not a lot to do besides play dress-up,” Juno mutters. After he found his way back into his room last night, he locked the door behind him, and then locked himself in the bathroom for good measure, clutching the straight razor from the medicine cabinet like it was a dagger. At some point after its angles left indentations in his palms and his hand started to cramp, he started feeling a little ridiculous, so he started actually shaving with the damn thing like an adult. It helped, actually: there was something grounding about working a hair treatment into his scalp, shaving his legs, brushing his teeth, scrubbing the accumulated oil off his face. He even considered putting on a bit of cologne. He might not remember the last time he groomed himself properly, but the actions were comforting in their familiarity, too mundane to exist in the same world as invisible monsters. “Would it be the end of the world if I got a book to read or something?” 

Ramses chuckles. “Starting to regret your bare bones decorating?” 

“I’m sure it came in real handy when I actually had things to do with my time,” Juno says, trying not to sound testy. “Speaking of which, any idea how long it’s gonna take your people to get my memories back?”

“It’s going to take time.” Ramses’ answer feels a little too rote, a little too practiced to be sincere. He mulls over his next words before he lays them out. “Juno, are you sure that would be wise?”

What kind of a question is that? “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?” 

Ramses folds his hands over the desk in a motion as ritualized and familiar as shaving had been for Juno. “Because you took the Lotos for a reason.”

The words hang in the air, thick enough to crush Juno in their gravity. “Do you know why?”

“No,” Ramses says. “But I know you were determined to forget or die trying.” He steeples his fingers. “You’ve always been reckless, Juno, but in the weeks before you took the Lotos, your behavior turned erratic. You were a danger to yourself and everyone around you. You turned off the extraneous functions in your eye to reduce some of the stress, but it didn’t help.” Ramses sits back, distancing himself from the words. “Whatever it was that pushed you over the edge, I believe it’s better forgotten.”

The haggard face from the video flashes back into Juno’s mind. 

_There are some things you’re better off knowing, okay? Just… trust me.  
_

“What am I supposed to do, then?” Juno asks. “How am I supposed to do my job if I don’t remember a goddamn thing about my life?”

“You were my employee, Juno, and you were hurt in my home. I’m not about to leave you out to dry.” 

“And what am I supposed to do about that thing in the hallways?”

Well, that’s not a look he was wanting to see on Ramses’ face. “Juno, what are you talking about?”

“The thing!” Juno’s voice rises. “The invisible thing with the cold hands that keeps following me around. The one that disappears when the lights come on.”

Ramses has one hell of a poker face, but it still takes him a second to put it on. That’s plenty of time for Juno to recognize concern and dismay on his face. “Juno, there’s nothing out there.”

“Yes, there is,” Juno snaps. “It keeps saying my name. It keeps trying to grab me.” 

“Juno–”

“ _I know what I heard._ ”

Ramses takes a steadying breath. “I believe you, Juno. But you have to understand, the things you feel and hear might not be real.”

“I’m not crazy–”

“I never said you were,” Ramses says, so firm that there’s no room to argue. “The drug you took was designed to interfere with the workings of the brain, and your body is still processing it. What you’re experiencing might be no more than a few misplaced fragments of memory without context to tether them to.”

Some of the fire goes out of Juno. “I… guess that makes sense.”

“It’s not an uncommon side effect with Lotos,” Ramses says, softer. “If it’s more intense than usual in your case, it’s only because of your dose. But this is normal, Juno.”

This is normal.

“The things you’re seeing aren’t real.” 

It isn’t real.

“It will go away on its own if you give it time.”

* * *

Juno keeps walking. His eyes are fixed straight ahead. His pace is slow enough that he’s never too deep into the dark before the motion sensors light up the next patch of hallway. He marks his trail by opening every door he passes and leaving them ajar, taking mental note of the things he finds inside: bedrooms, drawing rooms, utility closets, more branching hallways. He’s going to figure out his way around this goddamn mansion, and no stupid hallucinations are going to get in his way. 

Even if he can hear footsteps creeping up behind him, irregular and eerie. 

“That you, Evelyn?” he calls over his shoulder without looking back. If it’s really her, then she’ll  answer him. If it’s not, then it isn’t real.

It doesn’t call back.

_“Juno…”_

“You’re not real,” Juno calls over his shoulder, and he keeps walking. There’s a darker patch on the red marble; in the dim light, it looks too much like a pool of blood. He steps around it, just to be safe.

He must be getting closer to the kitchen or something, because a smell hits his nose, faint but unmistakable. It’s familiar, but he can’t place it. Not quite floral, not quite food. A spice, maybe, but he can’t place what it is or where it’s from. It feels familiar, though. Maybe he’s eaten it before. Or–

No. No, that’s not food. That’s cologne. But not Ramses’ cologne, or the stuff that Evelyn wears. 

Someone else. Some _thing_  else.

He pushes open the door. Maybe the kitchen was a better guess, because in place of the red marble and dark wood is an expanse of riveted steel. 

He frowns and starts to step through when a hand closes on his shoulder.

“Mister Steel,” says Evelyn. “I need to ask you not to go down there.”

“Jeez,” Juno mutters, trying to uncoil his fingers from their fists. He almost slugged the woman. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, will you?” 

Evelyn’s expression is unreadable “You need to stay away from there,” she repeats. “We have a lot of complex machinery down that way, and you no longer have the proper safety protocols. You could get yourself hurt.”

She’s close enough that he can recognize notes of cinnamon in her perfume. It’s ordinary. Familiar. Not the same scent he caught before.

“Sure. Whatever you say. By the way, was there somebody else down here a minute ago?” Juno asks. 

“There shouldn’t have been.”  She frowns. “But I can check the schedule if you’d like.”

“Yeah,” Juno says distantly. “That sounds great.”

* * *

The dreams keep coming back. 

The hallways stretch on forever, miles upon miles of steel and stone and sewage, the mixing smells so thick they leave him nauseous.  

There are people beside him, until he turns around and they’re gone, snatched into the dark while screams echo around him.

He sees monsters at the edge of the light– the features of an old woman sliding haphazardly over a boneless form– his own face leering back at him from the body of a shark– a little girl crying into her hands until she looks up at him with a mocking smile. 

Every morning Juno wakes drenched in sweat.

He keeps trying to tell himself it’s just a dream. Just a dream.

But dammit, he can’t make his heart stop pounding. He tries to huddle under the shelter of his blankets, but they feel impossibly restrictive and constraining, less like a shield and more like something trying to squeeze the life out of him. Frustrated, he throws them over the edge of the bed.

Just a dream.

* * *

The clock on his comms says it’s two in the afternoon, and Juno’s just gonna have to take it at its word. With nobody around and no windows to let in natural light, it might as well be two in the morning. He keeps darting from one pool of light to the next, clutching his comms and hoping that the sound of footsteps echoing through the hall are his own.

“Might as well be wearing a lacy nightgown,” he mutters to himself. 

The echoing hallway catches his words and throws them back to him, sounding uncannily like a chuckle.

It’s just a memory, he tells himself. Just a scrap of an old memory, bubbling to the surface. He pulls open the next door he comes to and pokes his head inside. 

It’s library, from the looks of it. The hallway light glitters back at him like stars, reflected in the crystals hanging from a flight of chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Beneath the chandeliers are dozens of tall freestanding bookshelves, arranged around reading desks and chaise lounges, and each chair has its own personal reading lamp. On the other end of the maze is a second doorway.

He weaves his way through the shelves, glancing through the titles. Maybe he’ll grab himself something to read while he’s here; he could use a way to pass the time that doesn’t involve wandering through the dark like an idiot. He’s thumbing at a volume on the history of organized crime in Hyperion City when he hears a sudden knocking.

He freezes, grabbing the book off the shelf. It’s large and heavy; good for blunt force trauma. He casts a glance over his shoulder. The door he came through is wide open. The hall behind it is empty.

“Hello?” he calls.

The only response is another knock, louder this time.

“Evelyn?” He tightens his grip on the book. “Ramses?”

The next knock is so loud that it sounds like the wood might crack. 

Over the vanilla smell of ancient paper, he catches the faintest hint of cologne. 

He takes another step, then another, slowly reaching out. The instant his fingers brush the doorknob, the heavy wooden door swings open with a long, agonized creak.

On the other side of the door, the hallway light flickers on. 

And… and he knows this hall. He’s been here before. There’s the dark patch on the marble floor, like a pool of blood. Immediately across from the library there’s another door. 

The knock comes again, and it echoes through the wide hallway like thunder. There’s no question about where it’s coming from: the door across the hall bulges with every blow.

_Bang._

_Bang._

_Bang._

He steps closer, and it grows louder. More insistent. 

**_Bang._ **

**_Bang._ **

And with an almighty crash, it bursts open. 

There’s nobody on the other side. Just a staircase heading down, and a wall covered in riveted steel.

For a long moment there’s nothing but silence. Then a sigh.

“Juno Steel,” says a muffled voice. “If you don’t know, that’s your name. If you do…”

He blinks, staring at his comms. The recorded video is on, playing under his sweating palm. But he didn’t turn it on. He didn’t open the file. He didn’t–

He frowns at the image in the video. Not at his own face, but at the wall behind it. 

Riveted steel.

“I know how you feel about puzzles,” his past self says. “But this is one that needs to stay in the box. There are some things you’re better off not knowing, okay? Just… trust me.”

Juno ends the video before it can make another sound. 

It doesn’t have to.

_“Juno…”_

He swallows, but it catches in his dry throat. There’s movement in front of him: a shadow stretches out across the red marble, reaching out for the open door.

Panic rises in his throat, but he forces it back down. That’s his own shadow. The library lights must be motion activated, too, because the chandeliers and reading lamps have all flickered to life in unison. They’re obviously old, and they get brighter as they warm up. Brighter than the dim light of the hallway. Harshly,  _painfully_ bright.

He grabs for the light switch, but nothing happens. Maybe the lights are wired to a different switch, somewhere on the other side of the library. He turns to look, but before he can get two steps, a pair of icy hands close on his shoulders. 

The lights behind him are growing brighter, and his shadow is twitching and dancing on the floor.

No. This is normal. This is just a bunch of mixed up fragments of old memories messing with his head. It’s not real. Ramses said it isn’t real.

“This isn’t real.” He grabs the library door and slams it shut, cutting off his view of the steel wall. “ _You’re not real._ ” 

Forget the light switch. He needs to get out of here. He drags himself out of the icy grip and toward the other door, to the trail of open doorways that will lead him back to his room. He just needs to get back, and this will turn out to be just another nightmare. He needs to–

 _“Don’t walk away from me!”_  

Overhead, the chandeliers explode with a sharp crack and a shower of glass. He throws his hands over his head, shielding his face with the enormous book. Around him, the reading lamps burst, one by one, flaring once and then plunging into the dark. 

Juno scrambles for his comms. The screen is cracked, liquid crystal still glowing in the distorted image of his face. 

The library door slams with a deafening crash, locking him inside. 

The cologne smell is so strong he might choke on it– or is it burning flesh– or is it diesel smoke– or sewage–

Are those icy hands grabbing at his clothes, or are they metallic teeth, or tentacles wrapping around him, choking him, crushing him–

And all the while, he can hear it, its voice cracking like static:  _Juno– Juno– Juno–_

“Mister Steel?” 

Juno gasps. The icy grip is gone, and the overwhelming darkness is gone right along with it. In its place is the blinding beam of a flashlight. She lowers it, and its brilliance is reflected like starlight off a thousand shards of glass. 

“Evelyn?” Juno coughs around the taste of blood. Was he screaming?

“It’s still happening,” she breathes, her face twisted in horror and pity. “Mister Steel, I’m so sorry.”


	4. Chapter 4

“What do you mean  _still happening_?” Juno demands. 

Maybe that would have sounded a bit more intimidating if he hadn’t waited until Evelyn had escorted him back to his room, but this is a conversation he isn’t going to have out in the hallway. Not while that… thing… is out there.

“I’m sorry,” Evelyn says. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“The fuck you shouldn’t,” Juno snaps. “What did you mean? Did this happen before?” She hesitates, but he beats her to it. “I have a right to know.”

She bites her lip. “I don’t know,” she says. “You said– but I didn’t think–” If she bites any harder, she’ll be tasting blood soon. “I didn’t think it was  _real_.”

“What, were slamming doors and exploded light bulbs too imaginary for you?”

“Anybody can smash a lamp,” she snaps back. “Especially when you were too drunk to walk straight half the time, and you were always shouting at nothing–” She curls into herself, her knuckles rising to her lips. “But I saw you. Just now, I saw you. I came running when I heard the slamming doors, and I saw the lamps, and I–” She looks like she’s about to cry. “Oh god. It’s actually real.”

So he’s not going crazy. Juno isn’t sure if that’s better or worse.

“Has it always been like that?” he asks. “Breaking lights and slamming doors?”

“I don’t know,” she says, and then shakes her head. “You– I thought it was all in your head– you said– you said you were being followed.  _Haunted_.” She puts a sharp emphasis on the word. “You said you were haunted.”

“How long was I like this? Before you knew me?” 

There’s a dip in Juno’s stomach. He already knows the answer.

_You’ve always been reckless, Juno, but in the weeks before you took the Lotos, your behavior turned erratic._

“Almost a month ago, I think?” she says. “It was– you were always kind of broody, but then–” 

“Something happened,” Juno finishes. She nods. “And I talked to you about it.”

“You were drinking a lot.”

“And apparently you don’t drink enough.” Juno digs the bottle out from his mattress and offers it to her, never taking his eyes off her. This is the closest he’s come to answers– there’s no way he’s letting her run away now. 

She takes the bottle reluctantly, unscrewing the top like she’s not sure what to do with it. All at once, she puts it to her lips and throws her head back, getting a mouthful of scotch. She sputters and chokes, but manages to avoid spitting it up.

“What was it?” he presses. “What happened?” 

“I don’t know,” she says. “You wouldn’t say– but I think– I think somebody died.” 

“That’s usually where ghosts come from, right?” Juno says grimly. “Did I tell you her name?”

Evelyn frowns. “His.”

“What?”

“You never told me  _his_ name. You just kept saying ‘he’s gone’.”  

But that can’t be right. 

Because Juno can still feel that faceless presence– that definitively  _female_ presence– walking beside him in the steel hallway, sloshing through the sewer. When he closes his eyes, he can see flashes of an old woman’s face rippling like a membrane over her liquefying body, of a little girl surrounded by tentacles made of ice-cold steel.

He doesn’t remember their names, but their pronouns are distinct– like jagged edges in his fractured memory. 

He tries to apply the same pronouns to the presence that’s been stalking him through this mansion, but his mind rebels at the thought. Those aren’t right for it.

For  _him_.

His head is throbbing. He needs a drink of his own, but Evelyn is clutching the bottle like a lifeline. “Who was he?”

“You wouldn’t tell me,” she says. “You said it was a secret.” 

“That isn’t helpful.” He rubs at his temples, trying to dull the building migraine. “Did I tell you anything else?” 

“You said it was your fault he was gone,” she says. “I thought that was why you kept seeing him everywhere. That it was the guilt. I thought if you could just forget, you’d be okay again.” Her mouth clamps shut just as Juno’s head snaps up. 

“You gave me the Lotos,” he says quietly.

She hesitates. “You asked for it, and I thought it would help you calm down. I thought if you could just forget– you were– I thought you were going to do something–” 

Juno’s thumbs dig into his temples. “Yeah. I wasn’t in a good place. You said that already.” 

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. 

He squeezes his eyes shut. He needs to lay down before his head splits open.

“One last thing,” he says. “That room. The one you didn’t want me going into. What’s in there?”

“I don’t know exactly,” she says. “It’s above my clearance. Only you and Mister O’Flaherty were ever allowed inside.” 

* * *

Juno washes down painkillers with a gulp of scotch and buries his face in his pillow until he can think in the rough direction of a straight line. 

The ghost– he has to be a ghost– has been leading him to that steel-walled room.

Why?

Is there something down there that Juno’s supposed to find? Or is he hoping he’ll get himself killed in all the heavy machinery that’s supposedly down there?

Is this a vengeful ghost, or is he the type that wants to be laid to rest?

Who was he? How did he die? 

And what does he have to do with Juno?

* * *

When Juno sleeps, he feels tentacles slithering around his limbs, wet with their own ichor. They’ve been cut and shot to gore but they keep coming, they’ll never stop coming, and his strength is running out. He doesn’t have much left– just this– just enough to hold out a little bit longer.

All the while he can hear pounding on the door behind him– on metal? or is it wood?– and a voice shouting for him.

_“Open this door! Juno! **Juno!** ”_

And then: blinding light.

* * *

Juno’s eyes snap open.

The smell.

It’s distinct enough that he’d notice it right away, and foreign enough that it wouldn’t show up just anywhere. Only ever where the ghost has been. Because that was  _his_ cologne, wasn’t it?

Juno rolls out of bed and practically dives into his closet, pressing his face to each of his shirts in turn. 

If he was there when the man died– if he was the one who killed him– then maybe he got close enough that the man’s cologne rubbed off on him. Maybe he’ll be able to tell what clothes he was wearing when it happened. And sure, it’s not much of a lead, but maybe he’ll be able to get some other clues from that outfit. A bit of lint, a stray hair, some kind of residue left in a seam. It’s a weak lead, but right now it’s all he’s got. 

But as he buries his face in one shirt after another, he realizes where he went wrong: all of these smell like detergent and fabric softener. They’ve been freshly laundered, and thoroughly. There won’t be a shred of evidence here. 

Goddammit.

He should have known. He should have remembered. 

He trudges into the shower. His head still isn’t doing great; maybe some hot water will help. Snuffling at his own laundry like a goddamn dog isn’t exactly doing him any favors.

But when he steps into the bathroom, he stops short. 

In his medicine cabinet, there’s a bottle. It’s small. Discreet. Maybe two-thirds full. Just a stupid little glass bottle nestled among all the other toiletries. 

A bottle of cologne.

There’s no label on the bottle, no distinctive shape to identify the brand. There’s nothing at all special about it, except for one thing: he doesn’t wear cologne. So why the hell would he have a bottle of the stuff just lying around?

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just as much a dead end as the closet.

There’s only one way to know for sure.

He spritzes some of it on the inside of his wrist, and then he brings it to his face and inhales.

It smells like sharp teeth and bright eyes, like deft fingers over broken skin and words that can pick locks. It smells like a fluttering in his stomach and a longing for things he can’t have.

He staggers back against the mattress, and he’s hit by a second wave of déjà vu: lips like silk against his own, a mattress dipping under a knee, a world gone sideways before it turns upside down.

His tongue presses against his hard palate, tracing the first consonant of a word he shouldn’t say. Muscle memory completes it, but there’s no breath behind the word. How long has he been shaping that word in his mouth without ever saying it aloud? 

He drags himself to his feet and across the bedroom, his hand falling on the door.

The ghost can open doors. Juno’s seen that firsthand. Walls probably aren’t much of a problem for him, either. So why did he always stay out of this room? Why did he never come inside?

It’s a question that Juno’s been avoiding for days. Every time he came close to shaping it, the made-up answers would creep around the edges of his sanity: that maybe there’s some kind of rule to ghosts to keep them past a threshold, that maybe he’s toying with him, that maybe he’s been in this room all along and Juno just wasn’t aware.

Now the answer seems obvious. 

The ghost never came inside because Juno was afraid of him. Because Juno needed one last place to feel safe. 

Juno steps into the hall and shuts the door behind him, resting his back against the sturdy wooden frame, surrounded by a pool of light. 

He takes a deep breath, then puts sound to the syllables that have gone silent for so long.

“Nureyev.”

It feels like a summoning.

Ice curls around his shoulders and clenches around his ribs, pulling the air from his lungs in a sharp gasp, but he doesn’t move. Not even when the light flickers out overhead and he’s plunged into near-absolute darkness.

This time he can recognize the feeling of arms wrapping around him. A chest crushed against his. A face buried in his shoulder.

The only light seeps through the crack under the door. In the time it takes Juno’s vision to adjust, the arms release him and pull away. He can make out a figure, tall and lean, barely visible in the refracted light. His face is soft, almost cherubic– and so very sad that it makes Juno’s heart hurt to look at him.

“ _Juno, please._ ” Nureyev reaches out, brushing Juno’s face with frozen fingers. 

Instinctively Juno raises his hand to cover them, to bring some warmth back into them, to keep them close.

There’s nothing there but his own cheek. 

“Nureyev?” Juno says. And then louder: “ _Nureyev?_ ”

There’s no answer. No whispering voice, no echoing footsteps, no cold fingers on his skin. The ghost is just… gone.

Juno doesn’t call out again. He doesn’t understand why, but before he took the Lotos, he wasn’t willing to say Nureyev’s name out loud, and he’s got the feeling he had a good reason for keeping his mouth shut.

He checks the time– a little past ten in the morning doesn’t seem very significant, but he marks it down anyway, just in case it’s part of a pattern– and he heads out.

He marches past the boundary of the lights without hesitation and without the light of his comms. He still has it with him, of course, but he keeps it in his pocket, only touching it to run his thumb over the cracked screen. Waving a light around won’t help him find Nureyev any faster.

The first few corridors past his room are fairly familiar, after all this time marching up and down their length. Then it’s up one staircase, four doors to the right, down two sets of stairs, then left– or was it right?

When he turns around to backtrack, he hears a second set of footsteps echoing his own. Yesterday the sound made his spine crawl; now his shoulders slump with relief.

“Nureyev?” he whispers. 

A cold hand touches his arm.

“Mind telling me what happened back there?” Juno asks. “You’re sending some real mixed signals my way.”

There’s a moment of silence as the light overhead flickers and goes out.

 _“I’m sorry, Juno.”_  Nureyev’s voice is barely audible, not even a whisper so much as the suggestion of words. 

“For which part?” Juno asks. He doesn’t want an apology, he wants an explanation. “Why did you run off like that? What’s with the light show? Why won’t you just talk to me?” 

Overhead, the lights come back on, flickering and sputtering in dizzying patterns until Juno had to squeeze his eyes shut against them.

“ _I can’t._ ” They’re only two words, but each one is dragged out of Nureyev kicking and screaming. The lights have stopped flashing, and now they’re blazing like miniature suns, even through Juno’s eyelids. There’s a sudden crack, a tinkle of broken glass, and one of the lights goes out. Another. Another. “ _It hurts_ –”

“Okay, okay,” Juno says quickly. “Message received. I didn’t know. I didn’t know! Just stop!”

All at once the remaining lights go out, so abruptly it’s as if somebody flipped a breaker.

“Nureyev? You still here?” The words are out of his mouth before he realizes what he’s doing. “No, wait. Don’t answer that if it’s gonna hurt you.”

He feels a cold squeeze at his shoulder.

“That’s great,” he says. “That’s all I needed.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to concentrate.

“Does that– does touching me like that– take anything out of you? Is it like talking?”

What the hell is he doing? How the hell is Nureyev supposed to answer that?

He holds up his hand, close to the grip at his shoulder.

“I don’t know if you can see me any better than I can see you, but my hand’s right here, okay? I’m gonna try something.” Hopefully he doesn’t sound like a complete idiot. “I can feel you, right? So just… touch this part of my hand– the pinky, that side– if you mean no, and the other side if you mean yes. Can you do that?”

There’s a moment without response, and then a cold finger brushes over his thumb.  _Yes_.

“Does it– I don’t know– does it hurt you to do that?” 

 _No_.

“Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.” With his free hand, he runs his fingers through his hair. “Let me see if I’ve got this right– you trying to talk to me, that fucks with the lights.”

_Yes._

“And the same thing happens when I can see you?”

_Yes._

“But you disappeared after that.” He stops himself. Gotta put that in a yes-or-no question. “I’m guessing that you have to take a break if you overdo it?”

 _Yes_.

“So you–” Jesus. “It wasn’t random then. You weren’t just going bump in the night to fuck with me or something.” 

 _No_. The fingers on the blade of his hand repeat the gesture a second time, insistent.  _No_.

“You scared the shit out of me, you know that?” 

He feels soft, cold lips press against the knuckles of his hand. They didn’t agree on a meaning for that, but he can guess.

Juno reaches out to him, but where Nureyev’s face should be there’s nothing but empty air. Nureyev can hear him, but he can’t be heard; he can touch Juno, but he can’t be touched.

“I don’t remember you,” Juno says quietly. “I’ve got bits and pieces, but not…” There’s no question there, and so there’s nothing for Nureyev to answer. “I think I was in love with you.”

Still no answer.

He wants to ask if it was true– if Nureyev loved him back– but he doesn’t. 

There are other questions he needs answered first.

“Am I the one who killed you?”

 _No._  Nureyev paws frantically at Juno’s hand. _No no no no no._

“Was it somebody else, then?” Juno asks.

The strokes are more decisive this time, more deliberate.  _No. No._

An accident, then? Or–

The realizaiton hits him like a slap across the face.

“Nureyev, are you dead?”

 _No_.

Juno’s hand feels a little frostbitten, but his nerves are alight. “Can you come back?”

There’s a moment of hesitation before Nureyev answers.  _Yes_.

“Not on your own,” Juno infers. “You wouldn’t be wasting time haunting me if you could, could you?”

 _No_.

“You need help.” And without asking, he knows. God, how could he have been so stupid? “You need me to go to that room.”


	5. Chapter 5

Juno’s pretty sure he could find his way back to the riveted-steel room on his own, but he doesn’t have to. Every time he needs to turn, he feels a cold hand on one shoulder or the other– or at one point, on the small of his back, urging him to keep moving forward. 

It’s a little weird, and not just because he’s being escorted through a dark labyrinth by a ghost that isn’t entirely dead. Nureyev’s guiding touches are freezing cold and mostly insubstantial, but now that Juno knows to expect them, they’re not unwelcome. He hasn’t been touched this much since he lost his memories.

Come to think of it, he hasn’t been touched at all since he took the Lotos. The fragments of his old life aren’t exactly comprehensive, but it feels like there wasn’t a lot of physical contact in his life, except the kind that left him with a broken nose and a multitude of scars. Maybe with all of that, he should be more wary about being handled by a stranger, but he finds himself savoring the touches, leaning into them as much as he can. 

It’s not hard to recognize the right door when they arrive. Its frame is splintered around the lock; the bolt went clean through the wood when Nureyev threw it open. 

And okay, if he’s being honest with himself, Juno might be a little intimidated. He pulls it open and stands in the doorway, peering down the stairwell and into the darkened corridor below. 

“Down here, huh?” he asks, trying not to sound bothered by it.

Nureyev’s fingers slide over his thumb. _Yes_.

What’s Juno going to do? Turn around and walk away? Leave Nureyev like this?

That isn’t an option and he knows it.

As he starts down the stairs, the cold of Nureyev’s touch fades away, leaving behind nothing but lonely lukewarm air, the steel walls, and the isolated sound of his own footsteps on the metallic steps.

The familiarity of it makes his skin crawl.

He remembers this from his dreams– metal walls and old machinery– dark stairs and piles of bodies– he can feel her tendrils snaking around his throat, crushing the air from his lungs, killing him– he can hear the ghost of a little girl laughing while he chokes–

_“Juno!”_

He blinks, suddenly back in the present. He’s shivering, but he doesn’t know if it’s from the half-remembered dreams or from the cold of Nureyev’s hands on him. 

“I’m fine,” Juno says automatically. “Just got distracted. I’m fine. Let’s get this over with.” 

There’s a trace of cold over Juno’s thigh. Well, that’s one way to keep him distracted. But this is one hell of a bad time for it. “Sorry, Nureyev. I’m not that kind of girl.”

 _No,_ Nureyev signals, and then taps again at Juno’s thigh.

This time, Juno’s a bit quicker on the uptake.

“Oh,” he says, sheepish, and he pulls his comms from the pocket that Nureyev was indicating. The flashlight function on his comms can only do so much to calm his fears, but at least now he can see where he’s going. 

Just a little further the stairwell ends, opening into a large open chamber. The walls and floor are poured concrete, and they look old– much older than the machinery that crowds the walls. There’s no motion-activated lights, no light switch– just a circuit breaker. 

He hesitates, his hands hovering over the switches. He knows what a circuit breaker is, but he doesn’t remember which switch turns on what. For all he knows, he could be activating the security drones or something.

Does this mansion even have security drones? That sounds like something it would have, doesn’t it?

There’s a brush of cold over one finger, and then again, lower down his hand. Nureyev repeats the touches, and Juno catches on.

“This one?” he asks, touching the switch underneath the spot of cold.

_Yes._

Obediently, Juno flips the switch. There’s a moment’s hum, and then the lights come on. “You know, I think we’ve got a good system here.”

 _Yes_. Nureyev’s fingers linger over Juno’s thumb. Maybe Juno’s imagining it, but the gesture seems wistful. 

“Don’t get too used to it,” he says. “We’re gonna get you back to normal soon. Just show me what to do."

Several moments pass in silence.

“Nureyev? You do know what to do, right? Because I don’t remember any of this.”

Juno doesn’t miss the hesitation as Nureyev guides him across the room, past a large metallic archway, and toward a computer set into a workstation. Under Nureyev’s guidance he turns the computer on, logs in, and opens one of the unmarked programs. 

The screen splits into four quarters, each one showing a different angle of this room. Juno glances up: sure enough, there are four security cameras set into the corners. They must be motion-activated, because the first frame is of himself stepping down the staircase, followed shortly by Ramses. 

Juno can’t hear what’s going on, but he can see Ramses pointing out each of the machines, carefully explaining things that clearly go over Juno’s head. At some point he must decide that explanations are a waste of time, because he turns to one of the machines, blocking it from sight with his body as he works on it. A moment later, the archway in the center of the room begins to flicker and glow. Strange lights dance between the metal rods of it, making the video shimmer and distort. In the video, Juno stares at the archway, utterly transfixed. Instinctively he reaches out to touch it, only to have his hand grabbed away. Immediately Ramses shuts it down, storming back up the stairs. 

There’s only a few moments of stillness before the footage skips to another time. Another day, according to the timestamp in the corner of the screen, when Ramses leads Juno back inside and shows him how to work the machines. In the present, Juno can only gather a vague impression of it; like before, their bodies block out most of the important details. 

He speeds up the footage, searching for a better angle. Another day passes on the screen, then another, and another.

And then they’re not alone. As always, Ramses comes down the stairs first, with Juno close behind– but Juno’s pushing a hover dolly. And slumped on the dolly is a body. 

They’re still alive, though twitching from a stunning blast. Their hands are cuffed together in front of them. their head lolls to one side. One foot hangs off the edge of the dolly, the heel of their pumps catching on the edge of the stair with every step.

While Ramses directs him, Juno boots up the machine. The archway flares to life.

And then Juno lifts the dolly. The unconscious person tips forward, tumbling into the light.

And then they’re gone. There’s no smoke, no ash, no flash of light. Nothing at all to indicate that the body was incinerated. The person is just gone.

Juno feels sick. He wants to turn off the screen, but before he can figure out how, his past self is coming down the stairs again, this time without Ramses, carting the body of a middle-aged woman.

“No,” he whispers under his breath, as if the person in the video can hear him. As if that’ll make him stop and reconsider what he’s doing. “ _No_.”

His past self doesn’t listen. As soon as the arch flares up, he dumps the woman’s body into the light as if he's taking out the trash.

And then he does it again. And again. And again. Each one hits him like a punch in the gut. He grips the edges of the console, his hands curling around them until his knuckles are bloodless and pale. He’s shaking, but this time the brutal cold he feels is entirely his own.

He’s stopped looking for a way to work the machine. He’s too transfixed by the horror of what he’s seeing. 

How could he do something like this?

What kind of a monster was he?

And then the video changes. Instead of the typical coloration, it’s tinted by a night vision lens. Instead of Juno, a tall, lean man comes down the stairs, walking carefully with only the narrow beam of a flashlight to guide him. He doesn’t bother looking for the circuit breaker, instead making a beeline for the machines on the wall.

He might be down there for minutes, thought it might be hours. And then, all at once, he freezes and turns off his flashlight. A moment later, Ramses comes down the stairs. His lips are moving. He doesn’t see Nureyev, but he knows he’s there. Nureyev looks like he might want to hide, but instead he stands taller. He doesn’t flinch when Ramses turns on the breaker, still standing between Nureyev and the door. 

They’re talking. Arguing. Shouting now. Nureyev reaches into his pocket. Something falls out of it, glinting as it hits the ground and rolls away. When Nureyev pulls his hand out, he’s holding a knife.

Ramses is holding a blaster. 

Nureyev doesn’t stand a chance.

Juno doesn’t want to look, but he can’t make himself turn away. He watches helplessly as Nureyev falls. As Ramses steps over his body to turn on the machine. As he drags Nureyev closer, and then pushes him through.

And then he’s gone.

“Jesus, Nureyev…” Juno steps back from the screen. He looks up. “Nureyev?

When he looks back at the screen, he sees his past self coming down the stairs with another body, as if nothing happened. As if nothing’s changed. He throws it into the archway like so much garbage– and then he stops short, frowning at something on the floor.

He bends down, picking it up. It’s small, inconspicuous. A little glass vial.

A bottle of cologne.

For the first time, he has the decency to look horrified. 

He rushes across the room, throwing himself at the station where his present self now stands, scouring the tape in a perfect mirror of the now. It’s impossible to see what he’s seeing, but Juno doesn’t have to. It’s obvious in the slump of his back, the buckle of his knees, the stumbling steps away from the screen. He slams a fist into the console, and then again, and then–

He stops. The change is so abrupt that Juno almost assumes it’s a glitch in the recording device; the video goes fuzzy at the same moment.

But then the video returns to normal, but Juno remains still. Slowly he turns around. Looks wildly at the archway.

And then his face sets into a look of frantic, desperate determination. 

That was the first glitch on the tape, but it isn’t the last. The recordings go fuzzy often after that, flickering in and out, blurring, sometimes shorting out entirely. In the space between glitches, Juno becomes visibly more of a wreck. The bags under his eyes deepen, his posture sinks beyond what could reasonably be called a slouch. He all but runs to the breaker when he comes down the stairs, and all but runs when he turns it off at the end of each session. He twitches at every sound, jumps when Ramses appears behind him. He starts aiming his blaster at the archway, or turning it on and letting his hands hover over the blazing light like he intends to step through it himself. On more than one occasion he’s shouting at thin air– Juno can’t hear or read lips, but he recognizes the shape of “you’re not real”. 

He starts coming down the stairs drunk, the hover dolly bumping against walls and machinery as he pushes it. He barely comes down alone anymore, probably because he can’t operate the machine in that state. 

And then one night he does come down alone, his hands fisted in his pockets. He stares at the archway with a look on his face like an apology, but he doesn’t say the words.

Then he takes out his comms and sets it to record.

In the present, Juno finally forces himself to look away. He’s already seen the video on his comms; he can’t watch it again. Not like this. He struggles to turn it off, his hands shaking too badly to maneuver the buttons.

It takes him almost a minute to realize why he’s so very cold.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his voice hoarse. “I’m so sorry.” 

The arms around him give a gentle squeeze, and it just makes Juno feel sick. Nureyev shouldn’t be comforting him. Not after what he’s done. Maybe the embrace is meant as a show of forgiveness. Maybe it’s meant to encourage him– to tell him that he can still make it right. But he doesn’t deserve either one.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I can’t undo this. I don’t know how.”

He braces himself and steps away from the console.

He doesn’t know how to fix this.

But Ramses does.


	6. Chapter 6

Juno throws open the door of Ramses’ office without knocking. 

Ramses is at his desk. There’s no question of that. With all the political enemies he made getting here, the only safe place for him is the mansion, with its impenetrable security and its windowless halls. All of his council meetings are conducted via video, all the papers that are sent for him to sign are delivered by Evelyn. 

Juno’s stomach twists when he realizes that Ramses couldn’t possibly have left the mansion to collect victims. That must have been Juno’s job.

Ramses looks up, setting down a sheaf of papers on his desk. With everything he did, it feels like he should be sneering at Juno from under furrowed brows, maybe baring his teeth. Instead the sudden intrusion is met with a look of concern. 

“Juno?” The usual gruffness of his voice is gone, replaced with something ginger and careful. “Evelyn informed me that you ran into some trouble in the library yesterday.”

Juno always took that tone for care. Now it feels like the tell of a lie. He doesn’t waste time with small talk. “I know what you did.” 

Ramses eyes him for a moment, then sets down his pen. “You’re going to need to be specific, Juno. I’m a busy man. Exactly what is it that I’ve done?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Juno snaps. “I’ve seen that machine of yours. The one where you bring all those people.” 

“Oh, that?” Some of the softness leaves his voice. “Being awfully dramatic, aren’t you? You make it sound like I did something illegal.”

What the hell? Juno’s mouth opens and shuts for a moment, his mind blank with outrage. “You want to tell me why  _that’s_ not against the law?” 

“Because it’s too new, I suspect,” Ramses says. “The technology is on the bleeding edge of what’s physically possible. Otherwise it wouldn’t be very effective, would it?”

“You made people–” Juno sputters for a second. He doesn’t have a word for it. “–disappear!” 

“I’m well aware of what I’ve done,” Ramses says, unnervingly calm. “But you aren’t, are you? Not really.”

“I know enough.”

“Clearly you don’t.” Ramses collects his papers, arranging them into an orderly stack. “You told me that bits and pieces of your memory were coming back. Tell me, do you remember Pilot Pereyra? Drake Draco? Min Kanagawa? Zhulong? Do those names mean anything to you?” 

Juno doesn’t answer, and Ramses doesn’t wait long to continue. 

“This city was crawling with people like them. It still is, though we’ve cleaned out the worst of the infection. People like them are criminals, Juno. They’ve spent lifetimes making themselves powerful by destroying innocent lives, and they built this city up around them to ensure that they’ll never see justice for their crimes. People like them can’t be held in a prison cell. They  _own_ the prisons. And the few of them that can’t just walk right out of their cell can make it into their own private palace.”

“So what?” Juno demands. “You just killed them instead?”

But that isn’t the right word, either. 

“Is that why you came running in here?” Ramses asks. “They aren’t dead. They’re in a prison that couldn’t be bought or taken over.” 

“If they’re not dead, then where are they?” 

Ramses takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “They aren’t in this world, or any other. It’s a place between places, outside of this reality.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“I’ve already explained all of this to you, Juno, and I don’t have the time to do it again. You’re going to have to take me at my word. It’s just a temporary arrangement until their empires can be dissolved and the city’s prisons can be reformed well enough to actually hold them, and then they’ll be removed. It might not be ideal, Juno, but it’s the best we have. Other planets have resorted to capital punishment for repeat offenders; compared to those, our system is fairly humane.” 

Ramses is calm, and every word is even and measured. The way he says it, it sounds perfectly reasonable. “How long were you planning to keep them in there?” 

“As long as it takes,” Ramses says evenly. “They won’t know the difference. Their bodies enter a sort of stasis when they go through the machine. They aren’t conscious of anything. They won’t be until they’ve been taken out.”

But Juno knows better. “Yes, they are.”

“Juno, my scientists have performed several studies about the process.”

“Not all that many, if this is still on the bleeding edge,” Juno says. 

“They’ve been put in a place outside of time,” Ramses says. “They have no physical needs. They don’t grow or change. By all means, they’re in suspended animation.”

“Their bodies, maybe, but not their minds. They’re still awake in there. They’re still conscious.” 

“You don’t know that,” Ramses says.

Juno plants his feet in the floor, immovable. “I’ve seen one of them. I’ve talked to him.”

“This again.” He kneads the beginnings of a headache out from between his eyes. “Is this about your ghost?” 

“You know about him, then,” Juno asks, half triumphant.

“I know that you’ve taken to wandering the halls at all hours and talking to yourself. I may be busy, Juno, but I’m not an idiot.” Sighing, he replaces his glasses over his eyes and looks up at Juno. “We’ve already been over this. What you’re seeing is just a reaction to the Lotos. It isn’t real. None of it is real.”

“Dammit, yes it is!” Juno snaps. “You know what happened in the library. You’ve talked to Evelyn.” 

“Yes, I have,” Ramses says, as calm as ever. “This building is hundreds of years old, Juno, and whatever you want to assume about me, I can assure you that my predecessors were worse. More bodies are found every time this mansion is renovated; I imagine hundreds of decomposing corpses can’t have been good for the wiring. So yes. Sometimes the lights flicker, and sometimes there’s a power surge– sometimes it’s even enough to overheat a few light bulbs. Evelyn knew all of this already. So did you, before you moved in. Why do you think you were both so eager to believe a ghost story?”

“It’s not the wiring,” Juno protests. His head is starting to pound. “The lights go crazy because he’s trying to talk. It– it sucks the energy out of them or something.”

Ramses frowns. The look of concern is back, but now it’s edge with something closer to alarm. “You hear voices when the lights flicker?”

And yeah, Juno knows what that sounds like. “I’m not crazy, dammit.”

“No, Juno, you’re not.” He rises to his feet. “What you’re describing sounds more like a seizure. A minor one, maybe. But if this has been happening often…”

“It’s not–” His voice is too high, too frantic, too defensive. If he works himself up any more, he’s going to dissolve into hysterics. He needs to switch gears. 

Because he  _isn’t_ sure.

Maybe this is all in his head after all. Maybe it really  _is_ just flashbacks and fear.

“You know what? Fine. If you think this is all in my head, then prove it.” 

Ramses frowns. “How exactly do you expect me to do that?”

Juno braces himself against Ramses’ desk. “The man I keep seeing. My  _ghost_.” The word feels like acid on his tongue. “He was on the surveillance video. He’s outside of reality, or whatever. So take him out and ask him if he’s been stalking me out here.” 

“Juno, your condition is far worse than I thought. You need to go to a hospital.”

“Sure thing, Ramses. Just bring him out for me to talk to him, and I’d be happy to. The name’s Nureyev.”

“I know his name,” Ramses says gravely. “You have no idea what you’re asking. Peter Nureyev is the kind of man who can’t be held by any other kind of prison. If I let him out, he’ll be as good as free. And it won’t end there. Once he’s out, he’ll kill us both.”

Cold rushes down the blade of Juno’s palm.  _No_.

“Then show me how it’s done and I’ll do it myself, and you can go play it safe in a panic room or something. He won’t hurt me.”

“You don’t know that. You know his face from the surveillance video and read his name in the file, but they’re nothing but random details that happened to come back. He was never important to you. You two have never even met.”

_Yes yes yes yes yes._

Unless it’s just a chill.

“Yes, we have,” Juno says. He wishes he could sound more confident. Maybe he’d be a little more convincing if he wasn’t shaking so hard.

“He’s a conman and terrorist from the Outer Rim. He’s never even been to Mars before, and you’ve never been offworld. You couldn’t possibly know him.”

Juno folds his arms over his chest, leaving one hand hanging free. “I guess we’ll find that out when we ask him.”

“Do you really think the truth matters to someone like him? You want to believe this fantasy, and he’ll use that against you. He’ll go along with whatever you say if it will get him what he wants.” Ramses takes Juno’s arm. It’s the first time he’s touched Juno in… maybe ever. “Come on, Juno. Let’s get you to the hospital.”

Juno squeezes his eyes shut. “Nureyev first.”

* * *

Ramses isn’t wrong. Juno knows he’s a wreck. He’s a deranged amnesiac who’s already more than a little in love with this man. It wouldn’t be hard to tell him what he wants to hear. It wouldn’t be hard to use him.

He still has to try.

But maybe ‘try’ is too active a word. Ramses is the one doing all the actual work, while Juno mostly just stays out of his way. From what he can tell, even when he had his memories he only actually knew how to throw people in there. He never learned how to get them out again. 

The archway lights up, so bright he has to look away– until the blaze is blocked out by a shape. Juno squints against the light until it goes out altogether. 

There he is, tall and lean, his face exactly the one Juno saw in the hall. The one that was so heartbreakingly sad. There’s not much capacity for sadness on his face right now. He’s gasping and choking like he just came out of deep water. He staggers backward, almost stumbling into the arch. Instead he overcorrects and falls forward onto his hands and knees. 

“Nureyev?”  

“Be careful, Juno,” Ramses warns, but Juno rushes forward. 

“Are you okay?” Juno tries to help him up, but it’s no use. Nureyev’s too busy gasping to notice.  

When he finally catches his breath, he looks up at Juno, and at Juno’s offered hand. 

“Do you remember me?” Juno asks. 

And maybe Ramses is right. Maybe this is all in his head. It doesn’t matter. One way or another, this ends now. No matter what happens, he’s getting out of this house once and for all. 

They both are. 

Nureyev reaches out to him, but he doesn’t take the hand up. Instead, he caresses Juno’s thumb.

 _Yes_.


	7. Epilogue

Juno wakes up in the middle of the night, his eyes fluttering briefly against the darkness of the room– and then they snap open wide, trying to catch any light. Anything at all.

It was a dream. Oh god, it was just a dream. Nureyev isn’t really back, he isn’t really real at all– he’s just a delusion– Juno’s just insane, that’s all he’s ever been, just a lunatic running alone in circles in an endless hallway with nothing but echoes and darkness and–

“Juno?”

The voice that calls out to him is mumbled, half-groggy with sleep, but it’s more substantial than the whispers of his nightmares. The hand that catches his is warm and solid. 

Juno’s voice cracks. “Nureyev?” 

“Right here, love.” Living fingers stroke the space beneath his thumb.  _Yes_. “I’m right here. I’m real.” 

“You’re real,” Juno repeats, trying to get his breathing under control while Nureyev raises Juno’s wrist to his lips. Nureyev kisses the delicate skin over his pulse point gently, and then again, harder. He sucks at the spot, catching it between his teeth until it almost hurts. Juno clings to the pain almost as hard as he clings to Nureyev, desperate and grateful. “You’re real.”

In the morning’s light, he’ll be able to see the fresh hickey there, dark compared to the other marks that are still healing. If he starts to doubt again, he’ll be able to look at those marks and know for sure that they were made by a person who actually exists.

Sometimes he finds Nureyev tracing the hickeys with his fingers, just to reassure himself that he can still affect the physical world.

* * *

After everything that happened, Juno wants to get as far away as possible from the mayoral mansion and its endless echoing hallways. He doesn’t remember anyone else on this goddamn planet– not enough to bother coming back into their lives, anyway– but Nureyev insists.

“I could help you get back in touch,” he says. “I can’t say I’m on intimate terms with your inner circle, but I looked in on you, once upon a time. Perhaps they can help you get back some of what you’ve lost.” 

And sure, Juno could. But then Peter shows him back to his office, where he finds fifteen years of his history chronicled in old casefiles and an excitable secretary-turned-private eye who could really use some help with her workload. He reintroduces him to Mick Mercury– his best friend, apparently– who fills the hours with tales of the good old days for the low price of a few drinks. Neither Rita nor Mick seems to mind the blank spaces in Juno’s memory, and they’re perfectly happy to fill in what they can. 

Juno knows those things really happened, give or take a bit of exaggeration, but most of it still feels like a bunch of  _stories_ – the background information for a case, or the backstory for a fictional character. Even though he knows better, a part of him won’t accept that his life didn’t begin in a labyrinth of darkened hallways. He quietly marks the point when he’s spent more days outside of the mayoral mansion than inside of it. 

But he’s out. He’ll take what he can get.

Besides, Nureyev likes it here. He doesn’t say it in as many words, but Juno can see it when the waitress who serves them their breakfast greets Nureyev as Mister Glass and asks if he wants the usual. When Mick greets them both with an overzealous hug. When Rita grabs Nureyev’s hands and bounces on the balls of her feet, babbling about the latest developments in her favorite soaps. 

Every time there’s that look on his face, there for an instant and quickly disguised, but Juno always manages to catch it: relief. It’s undeniable proof that he can be seen and touched and heard– that he’s  _real_.

Juno doesn’t know if there’ll ever be a time when he won’t need that proof. He needs it, too.

Sure, some days are better than others, and they can go on with their lives as if their stint in the mayoral mansion was just some thing that happened. Other days aren’t so great.

On those days, Juno doesn’t let Nureyev out of his sight for more than a few moments at a time. Nureyev holds Juno’s hand until his fingers cramp and he hurls a volley of inane questions and small talk just so Juno will talk back and prove that he heard. On those days, they climb the fire escape to get into the apartment so they don’t have to set foot in a hallway.

On those nights, the sex is almost brutal. In the aftermath there are bruises and bite marks and blood, and for days the evidence of their encounter plain on their skin and in the unsteadiness of Juno’s steps. In the aftermath there’s no more room for doubt.  

* * *

There’s no public news about what happened inside the mayoral mansion. Rita manages to find some things– the firing of crooked cops who have been selling controlled substances from evidence lockup, the quiet hiring of several quantum physicists, the hasty construction of a new maximum security prison on the grounds of the old Fortezza– but she learns not to volunteer the information unless asked, and Juno learns not to ask. 

Maybe later, when the nightmares aren’t so fresh. 

For now, Ramses is good for his word, whether he actually feels guilty for what he’s done, or whether he’s just invested in keeping Juno from going public with all of this. Juno doesn’t trust himself to ask him.

But there’s progress. That’s what matters.

And while he's making progress, Juno and Peter can try to focus on living.


	8. Epilogue (addendum)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eternalgirlscout asked:
> 
> so in the amnesia au, juno doesn't remember leaving nureyev, right? does nureyev ever bring it up?

Sometimes Juno gets a peculiar look on his face. Peter saw it quite often in the mayoral mansion, when Juno would wander through the dark, his hands hanging in front of him, not quite groping for the walls. Sometimes he would unwittingly turn onto a stairwell, and when he tried to step forward there would be nothing but air under his feet. In moments like that, Juno would freeze, feeling in front of him, trying to find the edge where the floor ended and the descent began. He always wore that same look on his face, his brow furrowed but his jaw slack, as he tried to find the borders of nothingness.

He’s wearing that expression now, but it isn’t the floor that he’s trying to map out.

Peter waits for him to ask for help on his own before he volunteers it. “Is there something on your mind?” 

“Just trying to figure a few things out.” Juno surrenders his search to more capable hands. “Did you know I was a part of…” He frowns, searching for the right word for it. It’s been weeks, and he still hasn’t found one.

“I knew something was going on, certainly,” Peter says. “But I didn’t know you were involved.” 

“Is that because I was hiding it from you, or…” He sees his answer on Peter’s face. “You and I weren’t together when it happened.”

“No.”

“Right.” Juno puts his foot back on solid ground, tracing over what he already knows to be true. “You and I met on the Kanagawa case, about the mask. And you stole the mask, and you left.” That much is in the casefile, but he seems unsatisfied by the information. 

Peter sits beside him, close enough that their knees press together on the couch. “What exactly is it that’s bothering you?” 

Juno worries at a recent cut in his lip. “We– uh– we slept together. Before my mind got fucked up. I remember that much. And yeah, I guess it’s possible that it happened during the Kanagawa case, but…” Does he realize how cute he is when he bites his lip that way? “I don’t know. We only would have known each other for a few hours at that point. And I don’t remember much, but I remember a feeling, and it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that just happens overnight.” He looks up, plaintive. “Does that make any sense?”

That’s a good sign– Juno remembers enough to recognize a gap.

Peter wraps an arm around his shoulders. “If it will put your mind at ease, yes, we’ve worked together since that case. You helped me rob a train once.”

Relief creeps into Juno’s face, and with it, a genuine vulnerability. “Could you tell me about it?”

So Peter does.

He talks about the Kanagawa case in detail– recounts the little jokes and acts of heroism that made him fall for the detective, the note he left, the dramatic escape. He talks about the Martian Pill, and the brief moment their paths crossed, the frantic desperation on Juno’s face as he gave chase. He talks about the card game and the train heist, of angry conversations shared in a bathroom, of outrage over gifted clothes, of bickering over Juno’s terrible old car.

He tells him of the Martian tomb, too, but this time he leaves out the details. They were imprisoned, malnourished and sleep-deprived. That’s more than enough. There’s no need to tell Juno about taking Miasma’s tests until blood drenched half his face, or about the way Peter tried to swallow his screams every time Juno had to take a rest. He tells Juno about Miasma’s true nature, about her plan, about destroying her with her own bomb, but he leaves out the attempted suicide, the deathbed confessions, the deafening silence on the other side of the door.

He doesn’t tell Juno about the night they spent together.

He doesn’t tell Juno about waking up alone.

Perhaps it’s selfish to keep it a secret– but then, Peter’s a master thief. Selfishness is part of his nature. 

Perhaps there’s a degree of self-preservation to it, as well.

He spent months trapped in the space between realities, unseen and unheard. Even back in his corporeal state, there are days when he feels as though he’s about to disappear again. He can feel himself blending into the background, becoming no more noteworthy than the wallpaper behind him, while observing eyes gloss over him as if he isn’t there at all.

The feeling used to bring with it a surge of pride. It was a skill, honed to the point of mastery, practiced until it became a habit.

Now that same habit leaves him terrified. When it comes over him, he wants to grab the first piece of furniture that isn’t nailed down and hurl it across the room, but he can’t. He’s too afraid that if he reaches out, his hand will pass right through it. When he tries to shout, his voice sticks in his throat, warning him that it’s no use. They won’t hear him anyway.

But even when the fear strikes him to the bone, Juno can till see him. That sharp blue eye fixes on Peter’s face, and those scarred hands wrap around his, and slowly he talks Peter back into reality, reminds him that he’s still here.

Peter needs those reminders. He depends on them. 

If Juno remembers that he left, then he might remember  _why_ he left– and he might just decide that he had the right idea the first time. 

And if Juno leaves again– if he disappears for good– Peter’s half afraid that he’ll disappear, too. And this time there won’t be anyone to bring him back.

* * *

Weeks later, Peter recognizes that odd searching look on Juno’s face again, that same reluctance to ask for help when he so clearly needs it.

Even when Peter offers, Juno is reluctant, as if he’s afraid of what the answer might be.

“Oh, come now, love,” Peter coaxes, all but climbing into his partner’s lap. “You know I’m here to help.”

That doesn’t seem to reassure Juno, but he finally lets it out. “Before… everything. Why did you leave?”

The question hits Peter like a punch in the gut. In that moment, he would very much like to back away and not be touched– but he’s all too aware of how that would look to Juno. He forces himself to stay calm, to keep his voice light. “I didn’t leave so much as I was walked out the door by a pair of low-level police officers. You had me arrested, after all.”

That doesn’t seem to pacify him. Peter thought it wouldn’t.

“I’m not talking about that.” Juno looks so afraid of what he’s going to hear. “After the tomb.”

The lies are already spinning themselves into existence in the back of Peter’s mind: that he was called away on another job, that he had to escape before he was captured by the police, that they agreed to split up for safety’s sake. A part of him still wants to cling to the illusion that he was in control of the situation.

But Juno’s memories are fragmented, not gone entirely. If Peter lies so explicitly, then Juno will know. Perhaps not now, perhaps not for years, but the lie will catch up to him. And when it does, the damage to Juno’s faith in him could be irreparable.

He takes a breath like he’s jumping out of an aircraft with a faulty parachute. “I didn’t.”

Juno says nothing. 

“We left the tomb. We took you to a clinic. We got a hotel room. And in the morning, you were gone.” There’s no word of plans or promises, but there doesn’t have to be. Whether Juno remembers or whether he can piece it together on his own, he seems to understand.

“But– why?” His voice is too small.

“I suppose I could hazard a guess,” Peter says. “You never did explain, and I wasn’t about to ask. You made yourself quite clear.” 

“No,” Juno’s hand is on his head, covering his cybernetic eye. By now, Peter recognizes the headaches that come when he delves too deep into his own head. “No, that can’t be right. I– I loved you. I  _love_ you,” he says it again, more forcefully. “I know that. It’s the only thing I’m sure about anymore.”

“I do appreciate hearing you say that,” Peter says, perhaps not as lightly as he intended. Even if Juno doesn’t remember that night, Peter does– and he remembers how hard he had to coax Juno to say he wanted to leave Mars, how carefully Juno skirted around putting it into words.

_If you’re a fool, Nureyev, that makes two of us._

And maybe the doubt is clearer on his features than he intended, because Juno is closer now, almost desperate. “Nureyev, please. You have to believe me. I love you. I love you more than anything. I wouldn’t– I don’t know why I did what I did, but I swear I wouldn’t–”

“Shh,” Peter says quietly, easing Juno back to a less claustrophobic distance. “I won’t ask you to make promises you can’t keep.”

“I mean it–”

“I believe you.” Peter’s voice is as even as Juno’s is frantic. “Right now, knowing what you do, you would never. But there’s no telling what you’ll know tomorrow. There’s no telling how your mind will change.”  

“It won’t,” Juno babbles. “I swear. Peter, I swear–” He’s silenced by a single finger over his lips.

“There’s only one promise I can ask of you, Juno. If you do leave again–”

“I won’t–”

“But  _if you do_ , I want you to tell me. Don’t walk away without a word again. Don’t treat me as if I was never there.” 


	9. Epilogue (addendum the second)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno still gets nightmares

There are patterns to Juno’s dreams.

Some are ordinary enough, mere scraps of memory and surrealism, pondered over breakfast if they’re not forgotten entirely.

Some are more insidious, believable enough to make him question if anything in the waking world is real; when Peter wakes, it’s to Juno clinging to him as if one of them will dissolve if he lets go.

And then there are nights like tonight, when Peter’s wakeup call is far less gentle.

The first one comes as a kick against his thigh; it happens enough that Peter rolls instinctively to the side, out of reach of flailing limbs. Juno’s thrashing in his sleep, one hand fisted in the blanket nearest his throat, the other groping blindly at his sides for a blaster that isn’t there. 

Peter has learned the hard way not to reach for him when he’s like this– the last time it happened, Juno kept moping for weeks after Peter’s black eye healed. Now Peter knows to put a safe distance between the two of them. 

“Juno.” He grabs the corner of the offending blanket and pulls it away. “Juno, it’s alright. You’re alright.”

On nights like tonight, the blanket is nothing but a reminder of grasping tendrils trying to smother the life out of them both– and that means it has no place on this bed. Peter yanks it unceremoniously off the edge of the mattress. 

“Nureyev?” Juno mumbles, his voice hazy and low. He always goes back to  _Nureyev_ when he’s in the dream. “Where’d she go? She was just here a second ago…”

He’s only half awake, but he’s calm enough that Peter can smooth his hair without fear of startling him. “She’s gone, love. She can’t hurt us anymore.” 

“She’s gone?”

“That’s right. We did it.”

“Oh…” Already his words are slurring as sleep pulls him under. “I thought…” 

“Shh. I know. But it was just a dream.” He slips an arm under Juno’s head and pulls him onto his chest. He’s had nightmares of his own disturbing his rest, and perhaps they could both use a bit of human contact. “Just a dream.”


End file.
